The Assignment 4 (8 page)

“What kind of sense?”

“A sense that you and I had more in common than either of us would ever guess.”

“Well, I have an offer for you,” Claire said.

“Anything.”

“You come to my apartment tonight, alone. I told my husband that you were an old college friend. He won’t be surprised to see you.”

“Why alone?”

“I want you to let my husband seduce you.”

“What?”

“It will keep him off of me for the night.”

“You want me to distract him.”

“Yes. The honeymoon is over, so to speak,” Claire said.

“Okay.”

“You don’t mind doing that?”

“It’s what I do,” Lacey said, trying to sound as natural about it as possible.

“And in exchange,” Claire continued, “I’ll help you with whatever you’re trying to find out about my father.”

“I’m not even sure what I’m looking for,” Lacey said.

“I’ll help you.”

“You’ve got information that could get him in trouble?”

“I’ve got a lifetime’s worth.”

“Do you know about The Club?”

“Just come over tonight. Let my husband have what he wants. Tomorrow, I’ll give you what you want.”

“Quid pro quo,” Lacey said.

“Exactly,” Claire said.

*

C
HLOE WASN’T SURE IT WAS
safe for Lacey to go over to Claire’s alone.

“What if it’s a trap?” she said. “What if she told her father what you were up to? What if he’s there, waiting for you?”

“I don’t think it’s a trap,” Lacey said.

“Why?”

“I trust her.”

“Claire Lally?”

“Yes.”

“Lacey, you don’t even know her.”

“I feel like I do. I feel like she’s one of us.”

“One of us?”

“Wounded. Lost. Alone in the world with no one to turn to.”

“I hope you’re right,” Chloe said.

X

L
ACEY WAS IMPRESSED BY THE
interior of Claire Lally’s apartment building. The lobby was decorated with deco style marble and brass fixtures. It was classic New York. It reminded her of the Rockefeller Building.

A doorman greeted her and she told him she was visiting Claire Lally in the penthouse. He said she was expected and directed her to the elevator. The elevator had an operator who wore the same uniform as the doorman. Lacey wondered what an apartment in this building would cost. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised that the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange lived in a place like this but it was still impressive. The operator rotated a dial and the elevator sped upward to the top floor. The door opened.

She stepped out and saw that there was only one door. Claire’s apartment must have occupied the entire top floor of the building. She knocked and waited. The door was made of solid brass, like the door of a vault, and Lacey thought it was strange. She would feel like a prisoner living in an apartment with a metal door like that.

It swung open slowly on its heavy hinges and Claire was standing on the other side.

“Lacey, come on in,” Claire said. She looked friendly, even glad to see her. Lacey was relieved that Claire was so welcoming.

“I feel like I’m stepping into a bank vault,” she said as she stepped over the metal door seals and entered the apartment.

“Mark’s a real stickler for security,” Claire said.

Claire led Lacey through a fabulous looking hallway, decorated in the same deco style as the lobby. The hallway was so large it felt like a lobby itself.

“You have the entire floor?” Lacey said.

“Yes we do. Seven thousand square feet. We even have an indoor swimming pool up here.”

“Holy cow.”

“I know,” Claire said, slightly sheepishly. “I would say that it’s excessive if I didn’t love it so much.”

“I love it and I haven’t even seen it,” Lacey said.

“Well let me take you on a little tour.”

Claire proceeded to take Lacey through a fabulous extravaganza of wealth and opulence. Brass fixtures and window dressings punctuated the marble walls and floors. The furniture and wood trim was of burr walnut. The wallpaper was hand-painted silk. There was a media room with electronic blinds over the windows and the biggest television screen Lacey had ever seen in her life. The color palette was dark, with lots of blues and grays and blacks. Many of the walls were mirrored with a tinted coloring.

“Your home is amazing,” Lacey said.

“Thank you,” Claire said to her, smiling. “And Lacey, thank you for coming over.”

“Of course,” Lacey said. “Thank you for agreeing to help me.”

“Would you like something to drink?” Claire said.

“Certainly.”

Claire brought her into a beautiful sitting room with wide vistas overlooking Central Park. Those views alone were worth a million dollars. They sat on a pair of sofas that were beautifully upholstered and enjoyed the view. A maid served them champagne in long-stemmed glasses and a tray of antipasti.

“You’re the first friend I’ve had here,” Claire said.

The words surprised Lacey. She wouldn’t have described herself as Claire’s friend. They’d only just met, and the reason for her visit was not personal but business. Lacey was trying to get information about Claire’s father so that she could run a story on him and ruin him. It was hardly a social visit. And Claire wanted her to seduce her husband. It was anything but casual.

“Friend?” she said.

“I know, I know,” Claire said. “We just met. We’re not really friends.”

“We could be,” Lacey said.

“In time,” Claire agreed. “I just meant, I’ll tell Mark you’re a friend when he gets home. He’ll be surprised because he’s never known me to have any friends.”

“You’re a solitary creature?”

“You could say that,” Claire said.

Lacey nodded. There was something endearing about Claire. Despite being beautiful and fabulously wealthy, she was also modest, warm, and self-deprecating. She was everything that Lacey felt she was herself. It seemed they had more in common than having grown up with brutish, abusive men.

“Me too,” Lacey said.

“I can tell,” Claire said.

“I suppose it comes from the type of childhood we had.”

Claire nodded. She seemed reluctant to think about her childhood. Lacey could only imagine how difficult it must have been to grow up with Lally. Claire looked out the window at the glittering city.

Lacey cleared her throat, she wanted to know what Claire had in mind for the evening, but Claire didn’t seem to hear her.

“Claire,” Lacey said.

“Oh yes, sorry, I was lost in thought.”

“Can I ask what you have in mind for this evening?”

“Of course. As you know, I’m married to Mark Wolf.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t exactly a marriage of love.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the marriage was arranged.”

“Arranged! Oh Claire.”

“Yes, my father told me, one month ago, that I was to marry Wolf.”

“I had no idea men still did things like that to their daughters.”

“Oh yes. It’s not even
that
uncommon. Not in the circles I’m used to. When men get as rich and powerful as my father, they don’t want anything to be out of their control. They get used to dictating everything, to calling all the shots, and that extends to the choice of partner for their daughters.”

“It’s practically medieval,” Lacey said.

“It is. I don’t know how things were where you grew up, but in my father’s world, deciding who gets to marry your daughter, and who gets to fuck her, is a fact of life.”

“I suppose that’s not so very different from the way things were in my world,” Lacey said. “I didn’t ever know my father, but my mother’s pimp had a pretty good idea of what he thought his rights over me were. They certainly included controlling who got to fuck me.”

Claire nodded. “People don’t realize how hard the world still is. I see people raising money or raising awareness for women’s rights around the world. They’re convinced that all the problems are abroad, in foreign countries. They don’t stop to think that all over America there are pockets of extreme oppression, where women are still treated as little more than chattels or property.”

“I’ve seen a lot of that in my life. And not just with the prostitution. When I was a waitress I would work twelve hours a day, men pinching my butt, customers losing their shit, my boss trying to get in my pants, and still at the end of the day I’d barely bring home enough to live on. It was as if they wanted me to be dependent on a man.”

“I’ve never had that sort of problem.”

“You’re lucky you haven’t.”

“But I’ve had other problems.”

“With your father?”

“Yes. I’ve had problems with other men, but all of them could be traced back to my father.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know my father, don’t you?”

“Yes I do, in a manner of speaking.”

“You’ve had to fuck him for work? At The Club?

“Yes.”

“Well, my father never had any difficulty using me to help with his business relationships.”

“Oh, no!” Lacey said. She realized what Claire was saying and put her hand over her mouth in shock. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“Let’s just say, Mark Wolf is not the first important businessman in this city who’s had the pleasure of sharing my bed.”

“Oh, Claire. That’s horrible. I can’t even imagine that.”

“It’s easy,” Claire said. “Just imagine that your pimp was your father and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what life was like for me.”

“He’s a very cruel man,” Lacey said. “I could tell that much from the few encounters I’ve had with him.”

“He’s an animal.”

“Didn’t your mother try to protect you from him?”

“She couldn’t do anything for me. She was as afraid of my father as I was. He ran a pretty tight ship as far as she was concerned. My mother was terrified of him. She’d never have been able to stand up to him. And then, when I was still very young, she died.”

“Oh, Claire. I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”

“It was. One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t. She just disappeared.”

“Literally?”

“Yes. The police couldn’t find her. Technically she hasn’t even been declared dead. She’s just missing. But I know she’s gone. And I know my father did it.”

“Is that why you’re agreeing to help me?” Lacey said.

“I think so,” Claire said. “To be honest, I’m not even sure who you are and what you’re trying to do. I’m terrified of my father. The only reason I married Mark Wolf was because I was so afraid of what my father would do to me if I refused that I thought a lifetime here with Mark would be preferable.”

“Well,” Lacey said, “I’m a journalist. I’m trying to dig up enough dirt on your father to get him implicated in a corruption scandal. He and some of his political cronies will take a fall. I think they deserve it.”

“Maybe you’ll even get my husband implicated.”

“It’s a possibility,” Lacey said.

“Well, like I said to you before, all of this scares me. I’m terrified of my father, and I’m terrified of Mark too. I have no doubt that either of them would have us both killed if they thought we could harm them.”

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught.”

“Yes, we will.”

“And we’ll have to be especially careful you don’t get caught,” Lacey said.

“I won’t have the protection that you’ll have as a journalist. In the end, you’ll be going back to your magazine, but I’ll be stuck with these men forever. One of them is my father, the other is my husband.”

“I know,” Lacey said. “We’ll have to figure out some way of protecting you.”

“Will there be a chance of protection from your newspaper?”

“I’ll try to find out,” Lacey said. “My magazine takes these issues very seriously. They went to a lot of effort to make sure I had a solid identity set up before they sent me into The Club. They have a department at the magazine that specializes in it. I’ll see if there’s any way they can help you.”

“Either way,” Claire said, “I’m ready to make my stand. I’ve had enough of living under my father’s thumb. Now that he’s married me off to an old man, I hardly even care what might happen.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange protection for you, Claire.”

“I’m just saying, sometimes, the way things are in my life, I hardly even care anymore. I feel as if I’d be better off dead than living a life of slavery like this.”

“Don’t speak like that, please, Claire. There’s so much that life has to offer. Girls like us, we had a hard start in life. We learned very quickly what it is like to belong to men with more power than us. But if we can win our freedom then the whole world is waiting for us.”

“Do you have other people helping you with this story?” Claire said.

“I do. Some friends. I’ll have to see if the magazine can do anything to help them too.”

Claire nodded. “Okay,” she said. “So you should know, I told my husband that you’re an old friend.”

Lacey nodded. She wasn’t sure how that fitted in with her cover story of being from Dallas but she presumed they could make it work.

“Where do we know each other from.”

“Let’s say we did horse riding together.”

“Horse riding?” Lacey said and laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny about that.”

“It’s just, there was some horse riding at The Club the other night.”

“What do you mean?”

“They set up these bronze horse statues and had me and another girl ride them. We were naked.”

“And there were dildos attached to the saddles?”

“Yes. How did you guess?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had the pleasure of that experience myself.”

Lacey shook her head. Claire really had suffered. What kind of man was Lally if he’d forced his own daughter to do things like that?

“So what do you need from me tonight?” Lacey said.

“Well, it’s my husband. He’ll be home soon and I just can’t face him tonight.”

“Do you really hate him?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t love him. He’s a rich old man that I’m being forced to sleep with, night after night, for the rest of my life.”

“Night after night? That’s pretty vigorous for a man who’s almost seventy.”